


It Runs In The Family

by RainofLittleFishes



Series: Every Crook and Granny - Unrelated Seadweller Reproduction & Junk [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dualscar is a good parent, Eggs, Gore, Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, Oviparous Trolls, Pregnant Trolls, Surgical Horror, Teen Pregnancy, Teenage Rebellion, Wigglers, gaming the system, trollpreg, violation of bodily autonomy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-29
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-27 11:28:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2691245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the kinkmeme: Breeder!Amporae, surgical horror.</p><p>On Beforus, it’s not uncommon for ancestors to foster their descendants, should they find them, and many trolls do. It is uncommon (and vexing to the State) when the rare mutant troll tries to replace the Mothergrub and brood their own. Into this overlapping territory of desire and taboo, Dualscar has managed to do what he wants for a very long time by being circumspect. Cronus has just messed it all up with all the grace and courtesy of a dirigible on fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Runs In The Family

The heavy double knock on the front of your hive door is unmistakable as anything but that of a Legislacerator drone. Cronus is out tonight, still not replying to your messages, just like the last two perigees, with no regard to the fact that you might worry, also per usual. You only have time enough to usher Eridan into the customized gamegrub cabinet with its pillowed extra shelf among the cloaking life signs, and sometimes sounds, of the gamegrubs. His eyes are wide and frightened. You silently lay one finger over your lips and snap your fins once, out in URGENT/Silent/Obey, back and clamped into Quiet/Still/Don’t-Be-Noticed. He curls up tight, arms over his knees, and if he were still a grub, he’d be covering his head with his tail. You pap him on his tiny sensitive hornbeds and he involuntarily relaxes, eyes blinking and shutting as he switches from stressed to sleepy like a whiplash. You apply a sopor patch to help keep him out and you close the cabinet and check that it latches. He knows where the safety catch is on his side, but he also knows not to use it unless you don’t come back.

This has taken only a few seconds and you are confident when you open the door that the delay hasn’t been noticed. The legislacerator reads you your rights as a witness and patron and takes you in to the station. Cronus is curled up in a bed in a cell there, arms over knees, just like Eridan, except that Cronus is visibly egg-laden, and possibly ready to pop, and can’t quite tuck in as much. The legislacerator is mildly sympathetic to you, it seems he’s raised juveniles himself. “None with this problem,” he assures you, with that particular quirked smile, of damn-this-is-fucked-up-mild-disgust, “but they all have some issues.” If only he knew. His boss’s boss is one of your very unofficial clients.

If only you had known, you would have locked Cronus up yourself for the last two perigees. Gestation only takes three perigees, it’s not like it’s impossible to hide away for the last two. Then again, he is much smaller than you, and the changes would be more visible on his frame. Dammit.

The operation is scheduled for three weeks out, or as soon as Cronus lays. You’ve told him, and told him, but it never sinks in until he’s facing the consequences on his own, and unlike graffiti and underage soporific consumption, there’s nothing you can do to get him out of it. They let you take him back to your hive and inform you that it is as yet unknown what exactly makes a troll a viable brooder, but that you will need to be tested as his direct ancestor. “It’s a short procedure,” one informs you, “You will be both be better off with one less thing to worry about. Leave the laying to the Mothergrub. Though I’m sure that you never got into the crazy shenanigans your ward has.”

Centasweeps of working from home and supplying a very specialized service on the side have just been blown out of the water by one sulky rebellious teenager and his inability to keep it in his pants, use a bucket, or ground himself for two perigees. You’re annoyed and also worried. You’ve been through the surgery wards for injuries before and you know it will be bad but you also know that you can survive it. Cronus is still half your size and has never experienced much pain. And you will have to get Eridan out of the hive before anyone realizes he’s connected with you.

You message Rosa and tell her that you’re feeling a bit stressed and unable to care for all your plants, would she please come by and help you dispose of a few? She heads out the same night with a very large potted strangler-fig set in a custom-made gamegrub cabinet and a promise to be back soon to continue the houseplant purge. You already miss Eridan.

There’s not much to do now except wait. Whether or not you’re observed, you have to act with the assumption that you are. Cronus is quiet for the next two weeks, with the occasional complaint, but mostly the silent terror of what lies ahead, laying and surgery both. You remind him that even without his grub-bedding parts he’ll still have his slurry-sacks, he can still contribute. You don’t discuss your “hobby”. You don’t mention that it’s possible that someone might now judge him unfit to contribute and take both. If he hasn’t thought of it, there’s no use in panicking him.

Elsewhere, you know that Rosa is making the necessary arrangements so that Eridan has now been hatched in the caverns and fostered out elsewhere with a corresponding paper trail. You hope she keeps him somewhere close enough you can see him occasionally. He’s a curious and beautiful mix of sweet and sharp and vicious and you suspect that he’ll be a lot more like you than Cronus when he grows.

It is absolutely imperative that no one else suspect and test Eridan for this Mothegrub-undermining trait. He’s only two sweeps and would never survive the surgery. Every time you think of it, you clench your teeth until you can feel starbursts of lights behind your eyes. You put it out of your mind. Rosa knows her game. So does Psionic, the overcompensating territorial beast.

Rosa and Psi are both among the many dozen trolls still living that owe you for certain services and would go down with the ship if you were to talk. In fact, they’re both in a rather select group of less than a dozen who owe you doubly because you’ve laid for each of them twice, as well as their living and their deceased clademembers. The two of them are integral to this game, because between them they can insert the proper documentation to add a few more grubs here and there without setting off any alerts for your undocumented brooding. Psi is a gift and a curse all by himself, because you’ve only ever laid one egg at a time, except when you’ve brooded his. Cronus was Mituna’s twin, Eridan Sollux’s. You wouldn’t trade them for anything, except that you just have.

Cronus lays before his surgery date and you wait until Rosa and Porrim have cleaned up and hidden two of the three eggs before you call it in that he’s ready for surgery. The third egg was smaller and tore in the laying, it won’t survive anyhow. Cronus looks crushed over it, so you don’t tell him that if all three had been whole, you’d have had to pick one to sacrifice anyhow. Not that the drones would kill a grub unless it was obviously unable to attain the basic quality of life rubric, but any wriggler recorded as coming from a brooder is going to be examined closely for the same trait and wrigglers under five sweeps seldom survive surgery. You’ve seen a few just above that age that would probably have been better off if they hadn’t.

You wonder idly if the clutch of three is due to whomever the other contributor(s) is/are, or if the brooding trait gets stronger with deliberate breeding.

Cronus is exhausted and helpless when you lift him up onto the kitchen table to allow the medidrone better access when it arrives. You let him take a few sips from your flask, then a few more. He’s still trembling. You lay a whole line of sopor patches down his back, lay his shirt back down so they won’t show, and let him have a few more sips from your flask. You push him down, gently, and wrap his arms and torso with padding and then steel cables, ratchet the closures into place. He’s breathing too quickly so you pinch his hornbeds and force him to breathe in time with you. You slip the padded rod, already dimpled with pressure from the laying, back into his mouth and pinch his hornbeds again and lean over him so that he can’t look down.

The surgery is inevitable at this point, the only thing you can do is keep him still so it doesn’t go worse when he writhes in pain. Porrim fastens his legs, bent and vulnerably open at the edge of the table, and you are once again proud of her, not that you’ve had much to do with her upbringing. Still, she might take after Rosa, but there’s a bit of you in her, subversive from both sides.

Once Cronus is locked in place, Rosa takes the opportunity to wipe him down with disinfectant. This is going to hurt, possibly worse than the laying, but his nook is fully dilated from physical pressure and hormones now, and if they wait they’ll be cracking open healing tissue or going in from the abdomen. The latter will give him more problems than just never wanting to wear skinny jeans again.

Porrim stands against the wall with Rosa when the medidrone and escort arrive. The escort is a tall muscular blue who looks like she’s itching for a fight, but with the patient obvious and already secured, no one tries to forcefully subdue him further. The medidrone arrows in on the obviously prepared area and slips several specialized appendages up his nook after a cursory dunk into disinfectant proffered by Rosa.

They don’t question why two jades are attending this punishment disguised as a medical procedure. If anyone has a right to take offense to trolls brooding eggs, it would be those charged with the care of the Mothergrubs and their thousands of state-approved eggs.

Cronus groans and tries to buck. The blue grins. You push him down and Porrim adds another cable across the table. Rosa keeps her eyes on the medidrone, the only leverage you have is cooperating and logical suggestions, if they are made at just the right time, like the proffered jar of disinfectant.

You loom over Cronus more so he can’t see anything but you. You start talking, tell him everything he never wanted to know, will probably never remember, about navigating at sea with nothing but a compass, a sextant, and a watch. It doesn’t really matter what you’re saying, you just need to block out the noise. You can hear the whirr of the medidrone, a combination of motors, ventilation, and some psychological growl-clicking gimmick meant to terrify. You can hear the sick sound of flesh parting as the drone pulls the grubnesting bits out. He’s already lost a lot of fluids in the laying and Rosa has a rehydration kit for when your “guests” leave. Mostly you can hear Cronus, a high whine and marathon of panting and groans. His eyes are alternately wriggler-wide and clenched shut. There’s a trickle of blood out of his mouth, mingling with sweat and drool from the bar. You don’t stop talking.

Cronus finally, blessedly, goes unconscious, and you keep talking, softer, keep a grip on his horns. Maybe they’ll label you an overly concerned patron, but they’ve already established that you’re to be tested, they have no proof of you breeding, you’ve been living independently for centasweeps and there’s no case for you going senile, so there’s really nothing they can do about it.

The medidrone finishes up, the last appendage to go in the cauterizer, and Cronus groans and strains again. The straps creak. The edges of the table are denting. The smell of cooking flesh joins the smell of all the other bodily fluids on the table. The medidrone withdraws and informs you that the procedure was successful. The blue looks disappointed. They take the doomed egg and both leave. Porrim locks the door behind them. You are already fiddling with the ratcheting clips, fingers clumsy with haste. You force yourself to slow down. It takes far less time to get Cronus undone than it took to fasten him down. You lever him up and pull his shirt off. He’s too exhausted to protest, while hours ago he insisted that he might have to drop trou but a troll was allowed some dignity while pushing grubs out of their snatch.

Porrim gets him water while Rosa sponges him down, dries him off, and inserts a needle in his inner elbow for the IV bag. You lift him off the table and Rosa gets his back side as you heft him. Porrim covers the couch in several layers and moves a coatrack over. You lay him down and Rosa connects the IV line, hangs the bag. He looks like a wrung dishcloth in vaguely troll-like form. You stay with him while your co-conspirators attend to the contraband.

You brush his hair back and try to think objectively if it will be suspicious or not for Rosa to observe when they do the same thing to you next week. You wonder if you will ever see what his grubs look like. You wonder if you’d recognize who else was a party to his bucket-less sexual explorations. You’d recognize a lot of trolls, you’re on vidcalls all night, most nights, for your job, and none of your callers who didn’t _already_ know would have ever suspected that under the cutoff of the screen, your abdomen was in various states of convex as often as not.

Rosa and her daughter are heading out with another set of large planters, eggs concealed inside, and you almost laugh to yourself at how obvious it is, but people see what they expect, and jades are known to have a proclivity for plants. The bonsai on top are older than you. The eggs in the underside are just an hour old. Cronus is asleep now, and you keep your hand on his head, need to hear the steady, if raspy, continuation of his breathing. Rosa tells you that the medidrone left his shameglobes but that she can’t guarantee that they’re still functional. She tells you that your strangler-fig misses you but seems happy in the spot she planted it. The door closes and you get up, lock it, and sit back down. Your hand goes back on your child’s head. In his sleep and pain he turns to you.


End file.
